Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate this time it’s have the council misplaced £800,000?

First two pictures from Ben, then and now ones relating to one of the cliff collapses in the area of the site.

If you expand the now picture you can see the tell tale cracks in the road surface which indicate movement of the chalk below.

However what this post is about is that the council have published the agenda for the “Pleasurama site review task and finish group” scheduled for 31^st of this month http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=544&MId=3575&Ver=4

One of the associated documents http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/documents/s33403/Response%20to%20OSP%20Questions%20-%20Pleasurama%20Site%20Development%20-%20amended%20-%20Annex%201.html?CT=2 contains answers to some of the questions that councillors put to council offices at the last meeting.

One aspect of these questions relates to the developer SFP’s financial commitment to the project i.e. how much have they actually spent on it?

Here is the question:

“Statements have been aired publicly regarding the construction costs borne by the developer. Does TDC have any proof of this expenditure? If so, how much in total and has it been justified as reasonable?”

and here is the officer’s answer:

“Over £600k has been spent on reinforcing the cliff facing wall; TDC undertook this work which was paid for by the Developer.

Road and drainage works have been undertaken by the developer – TDC have no detailed costs for these works.

Site works including laying the foundations – we do not have detailed costs for these works.

A sum of £1 million has been paid to the council as a bond in relation to the completion of the hotel.

There are professional fees for a significant number of aspects of the development – but the council do not have the detailed costs of these.

The developer has indicated that the total of these costs to be between £4- £5m, but the exact sum has not been a major issue as the significant sums obviously invested demonstrate a serious intent with regard to the site.”

The trouble here this bit “Over £600k has been spent on reinforcing the cliff facing wall; TDC undertook this work which was paid for by the Developer” difficult as TDC have already stated in response to an foi request I made at the time that the developer only contributed £100k to the works, which they said cost about £900k and was paid for out of your and my council tax.

So either someone has pocketed £800k or TDC’s new answers are a bit economical with the truth. 

It does make one wonder about the professional fees of between four and five million pounds, I mean professional fees wouldn’t mean the cost of actually doing something, but would be the fees for who? Architect perhaps, seems a tad on the high side, particularly in view of the various problems with the plans being the wrong height and the various attempts to get the building to fit in the space available.  

Anyway if anyone finds an envelope with £800,000 in it, then it probably belongs to those nice people at council and if anyone finds one with around £4,500,000 in it then it probably belongs to those nice people at SFP.

A history of the Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate.

There is so much information and misinformation appearing about the Royal Sands at the moment and this combined with most of the information I have put on the internet over the years being in the order that I wrote it rather than in some sort of chronological order, I though it was time I sorted out something in the form of dedicated website to cover the issue.

So over the next few weeks I will try to put together the information in a way that is easy to follow.

I don’t think there is much point in covering the period before SFP came along in 2002 apart from the district auditors report on Pleasurama audit 2001 2002 http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/Data/Cabinet/20031016/Agenda/$Agenda%20Enclosure%206.doc.pdf which is the official story of the site up to then. Those of interested in raking over the errors that occurred prior to 2002 will find this document interesting.

This is the oldest SFP document I know of it is the initial proposal presented to the council as part of the tender for developing the site http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts10/id5.htm

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I guess some of the things that are obvious now wouldn’t have been obvious then.

Apart from the obvious aspect that it looks like a Whitbread development although pretty soon after the council decided to go with it Whitbread distanced themselves from the project, saying that they had only expressed an interest in when approached and had made no commitment to it.

The key part is 9.17 Funding Arrangements.

“SFP bank will be funding the project overall through SFP Ventures Partners Limited and Mr Shaun Keegan.”

I guess looking back two of the things the council should have checked before selecting this tender where Whether Whitbread had a made firm financial commitment and whether SFP Bank actually existed.

Obviously as Whitbread pulled out they didn’t.

The SFP Bank thing is a bit more complicated.

Despite what the document says Société Financière Privée S.A (SFP), wasn’t actually a bank at that time it was submitted to the council 2002, I think to understand this you would have to understand the meaning of the French word Financière, which means stockbroker.

Without a banking licence granted by the Swiss banking authority they wouldn’t have been allowed to finance a foreign property development.    

In 2003 Société Financière Privée S.A. (SFP) was granted a banking licence so it changed its name to Société Bancaire Privée S.A. (SBP), it continued to trade as a bank – apart from a period when its licence was revoked – until mid 2009 when it got into difficulties, was taken over and became Banque Profil de Gestion (BPDG).

One aspect of the document that I think is important is that the whole development was supposed to have been finished by 2003.

The Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate, up before cabinet again next week.

As is usually the case with this development it is the secrecy surrounding any democratic discussion about it that I find most worrying.

We always come back to the fact that it is to be built on the most prominent, council owned seafront leisure site in Ramsgate. Because of this much of the towns leisure based economy hinges on getting it right.

My main concern with this development focuses on the safety issues, cliff stability, flood risks and emergency escape routes. As a local historian I am very much aware that Ramsgate Eastern Undercliff has a history of storm damage and cliff collapses that is sporadically recorded back to the mid 1800s. This history isn’t written up in one place and I periodically discover new information about it.

More of this information came up over the weekend when I was reading the book that I hope to have in print next week about the Granville, this time it related to Marina Road, the sloping road down the cliff in front of the Granville. According to the plans for The Royal Sands this road forms the access for busses and delivery lorries to the development.

After various cliff collapses there in about 1960 the borough engineer made this road a one way only, up the hill and I have taken the issue of having heavy vehicles going down this hill with various council engineers, particularly with respect to the forces associated with a line of heavy vehicles having to stop in an emergency while going down the hill.

The answers I got were along the lines of those Victorian engineers knew what they were doing and there was no problem. It was interesting for me to read that part of this structure collapsed the day before the opening ceremony and the opening parade had to be diverted around it.

As this development is to be built between the sea and the cliff face on an EA designated high risk flood zone, with access via Marina Road, then the condition of the cliff and sea defences between the lift and where Nero’s was (the hairpin bend on Marina Road) is important to the viability of the development.

Because the development is built between the face of the cliff and the sea, a safe and dry means of escape from the development also needs to be considered.

A considerable part of these problems aren’t really anyone’s fault, developer or council, as the site was designated a high risk flood zone after the planning permission was granted. However when it comes to the financial viability of the development, much is likely to hinge on the ability to borrow money for a new development built on a high risk flood zone, without a flood risk assessment.

Obviously as the plans were passed before it was designated it doesn’t have to have one, but I think at some point the proximity of the sea needs to be properly assessed and one hopes this doesn’t happen in the way it did for the Turner Centre.

The Isle of Thanet Gazette last published an article about The Royal Sands last month, here is the link http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Ramsgate-Pleasurama-site-set-redeveloped-3-3m/story-16469934-detail/story.html and I guess this is the last time the various parties official position has been set out.

There are various things in this article that don’t quite make sense to me, the most obvious being that it says about 30% of the apartments have been reserved. Obviously as the apartments that are available to reserve are published on the internet, it is an easy matter to see that 14 out of 107 were reserved when the article was published last month and this figure is the same today.    

The council offices stance on the development has changed from when this came before cabinet three years ago when they recommended winding up the development and taking the land back, to their position now which is recommending that the cabinet approve going ahead with the development.

My guess on this one this that the council are concerned here about the developer taking them to court to get back the money he has spent so far.

I guess my position on this one is, if the council go decide to go ahead, I would like them to ensure that the development is a as viable and successful as it possibly can be and if they decide to pull out, that the site is returned to a usable state as soon as is possible.

So going ahead for me ought to mean a proper flood risk assessment and an assessment of the cliff condition from the lift to the old Nero’s site, before continuing with the development.

Much of this is cost related, as any problems with either the cliff or the sea defences may be much cheaper to solve before the development is built.

I guess of all the aspects of The Royal Sands it is the flood and storm situation that is the most bizarre.

Conversations with those involved go along the lines. “there is no problem as we have complied with all the legalisation, so there isn’t a problem.”

To which I reply. “You do accept that the site is an EA designated high risk flood zone.”

The answer to this one is now always. “Yes”

I then say. “You do accept that there hasn’t been a flood risk assessment.”

This has pretty much moved from the “Not that we know of” to the “Yes” camp.

Within a £22,000,000 project, the cost of a flood risk assessment would be a drop in the ocean and it is most likely that any work that needed doing would be funded by national government.

The other aspect of this is the newly built foundations, where conversations with the parties involved assure me that the shallow foundations on the old beach are adequate and properly calculated, something I don’t disagree with.

The problem occurs when I ask them about the sea defence that protects the sand these foundations are sitting on from the sea. “Yes” they agree that the sea defence dates from 1860. “Yes.” They agree that they have no plans or maintenance record for it.     

Now obviously this sea defence may be perfectly ok, on the other hand it may need some repairs and maintenance before people are going to live in the development behind it, which is sitting on sand.

On of the councillors asked me. “How long it would take before there was a problem, if we had a big tidal surge storm.”

What he was getting at was if the sea defence started to wash out, how long would the council have to put in some alternative to protect the foundations from washing out, which would cause the building to collapse.

The only other example we have of this is when the other sea defence built in 1860 by the same railway company failed in 1953, then we lost about ten square miles of land to the sea in one night.

The cliff is a difficult one, the whole of the cliff face from the lift to the hairpin bend where Nero’s used to be is faced with a variety of man made structures, to a lesser or greater degree these act as cliff supports. And to a lesser or greater degree these are intended to stop the effects of the weather from damaging the chalk and causing a cliff collapse.

The idea with most of these structures is to waterproof the front of the cliff and the cliff top to stop rainwater from getting in, the slightly acidic nature of rainwater causes the chalk to soften and disintegrate.

with a natural grass topped cliff this is largely compensated for as soon as one gets a few feet into the chalk as the chalk itself acts as a filter purifying the water. I have simplified this issue considerably to help people form a mental picture of the situation. 

A problem here and one that has contributed to some very large cliff falls in Ramsgate, is that when the surface on the top of the cliff cracks this concentrates the rainwater into a small area, causing the damage to the chalk to extend much further in.

Another problem is that the supporting façade structure holds back small chalk falls until the structure fails and a much larger fall occurs.  

The council’s engineers and the engineers that advise the council describe the cliff façade behind the Royal Sands as structures to prevent weathering and not as support structures. Essentially it is the chalk cliff that holds up the concrete façade and not the concrete façade that holds up the chalk cliff.


Generally there are three main signs that all is not well with these support structures, vegetation growing from any cracks, spalling (concrete cancer) where the metal reinforcing rods inside the concrete go rusty and damage the surrounding concrete and movement of parts of the structure.   

Back when the development was first granted planning permission this structure showed all of these signs, and I made a considerable amount of fuss along the lines of the fuss I am now making about the sea defence.

Whether it was because of this fuss or for some other reason the council eventually decided to survey most of the cliff façade behind the site. The results of this survey were pretty bad, the gist of the results was the structure was in a poor state, had a short serviceable life and needed emergency repairs.  Two years after the survey I managed to get hold of the report and made some more fuss, which may or may not have resulted in the emergency repairs.

One way or another the council spent about £1,000,000 on repairing the cliff, but at some point or another the council officers and councillors seem to have got it into their heads that this repair has given the cliff façade a new life comparable to the expected life of the development.

I guess since the £1m repairs, the repairs to the repairs, the weedings, the condition of the cliff now, you can see the latest crop of vegetation the picture above, are all rather self explanatory. 

After the cliff repair various things came to light that I find considerable cause for concern.

The first was the crack and bulge in one of the panels that I reported to the council and was subsequently repaired, it wasn’t this occurring that really concerned me but that the crack which didn’t appear in any of the reports prior to the £1m repair had been filled rather than the panel replaced during the £1m repair.

The next was the lose bit of masonry which I reported to the council and the hse and about which they took no action about until a large chunk of it fell off partly into the site and partly outside.

After that was the business where the council gave me the wrong plans to the arched part of the cliff façade, when the developer undermined it I made a considerable amount of fuss fire brigade hse and so on. 

As it happened there was no safety issue as the arched part is cast concrete and not concrete blocks as the plans showed.

But what was really worrying was the council, developer and the survey for the £1m contract, all used these wrong plans.    

I guess the underlying problem here is that the council have got into a position where having spent £1m on the cliff, they have to say that it’s ok condition wise.

My own feelings about the cliff are that the arched concrete part is probably in fairly good order, this was built in the 1930s after a series of large cliff collapses and I would guess that because of these no chances were taken. The square portal part at the lift end I haven’t really filled I the history of this part properly. I am pretty certain that it was constructed at various times and in various bits between 1940 and 1970, this is the part where the majority of the vegetation is growing out of the wall. It was one of the panels in this part that had to be replaced after the contract. This was also this part that was the subject of the contractors investigation. 

I have laid out what I hope is a very concise explanation of my concerns about aspects of this development because of the cabinet meeting about it next Thursday.

Once again the cabinet have to decide whether to go ahead with this development, this issue is to be discussed at the end of the cabinet meeting, in secret with the press and public excluded.

Picture added to respond to comment

The Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site in Ramsgate on the front of The Gazette.

The ongoing saga of the Royal Sands is the subject of the lead article in this weeks Isle of Thanet Gazette, you can read the story online at http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Thanet-council-negotiates-pound-3-3-million-deal/story-15803551-detail/story.html and for a local paper story covering a very complicated subject in a very few words it goes some way to getting at the financial issues.

As Councillor Simon Moores has already stated on his blog that the council’s secret documents on this issue have leaked out, see http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/on-royal-sands.html I have to tread the unusual line here of talking about a council secret, that isn’t really a secret anymore, but the council still seem to saying is a secret.

Before anyone considers that there may be party political implications here, the secret council documents that related to the secret cabinet meeting also leaked out when the Conservative cabinet discussed the issue three years ago.

Anyway I will try to summarise the situation in as few words as possible, which I hope will enhance the information in the newspaper article.   

I think that when the development was first approved by the council the idea was that it should be mainly a leisure development, in this instance the leisure elements being the retail units along the front of the ground floor of the development, the majority of the ground floor is car parking for residents, so these are not that significant and the hotel at the harbour end of the development.

I think the council view this hotel as being the key aspect of the development with regard to trying to regenerate Ramsgate, and every document that the council have produced on the matter seems to include clauses to ensure that when the residential part of the of the development is built, the developer doesn’t just take the money and run.

The key documentation here is the development agreement, which is in the public domain, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/ I have published it there in a series of linked internet pages, it’s long and complicated.

After the buildings on the site burnt down, the council made a considerable effort to recover the leasehold from Jimmy Godden, this they finally achieved over ten years ago.

Then they accepted a proposal put forward by Whitbread with SFP as partial financiers but unfortunately Whitbread pulled out and SFP changed the design of the project.

This happened during the change of administration from Labour to Conservative and during the confusion plans got approved for the current development in January 2004, at the time the plans were for a development that was too tall to fit in the available space and this has presented various problems during the last ten years.

The cost of building the whole development is in the region of £22m and the idea was that the developer had £10m available either in cash or by borrowing it from third party funders, the remaining £12m coming from selling the departments as they were built.

The council was to have been safeguarded against the developer going bust by the developer having a performance bond, which essentially is an insurance policy issued by a bank. The idea being that if the development wasn’t completed the council would have enough money to finance its completion.

The performance bond would have covered the development for £5.6m and as the council were reasonably financially covered they signed the development agreement in October 2006.

The basis of this was that the council granted 199 year leases and the council got paid for the land by getting £15,500 for each apartment sold, 50% of whatever the developer could get for the commercial leases, probably not much, value for commercial leases tends to relate to the benefit of having an old lease to sell with a below market rent.

Anyway in 2009 the developer came back to the council because he couldn’t get the performance bond i.e. the insurance policy to cover the council’s liability if anything went wrong.

What the developer asked to do was to deposit £1m in a council bank account instead of producing the £5.6m insurance policy.

On 16^th June 2009 this came before a secret cabinet meeting with recommendation from the council officers to the cabinet to take back the land from the developer and not proceed with the development.

The cabinet decided instead to let the developer proceed with the development on the basis of the £1m deposit.

The forward funding at this time was to be £1.5m from the contractor, £5m from the hotelier and of course the £1m in the council bank account.

At this time the land was valued at £13.6m

Now the developer has come back to the council again and this time seems to be saying that they can’t raise the money from the third party funders so what the developer is proposing is that the council sell them freehold of the land for a payment of about £1.6m now and a further payment on the sale of each apartment totalling about £1.6m plus any amount relating to the commercial property.

This would then give the developer the land worth about £13.6m that the could raise money against.

At the moment the other council liabilities are maintaining the cliff façade that they have already spent £1m on, and the sea defence.

I have several concerns here the main one being is that this plan relies, at several stages, upon borrowing money against building land in a high risk flood zone, that has no flood risk assessment.

Another is that the hotel would no longer be guaranteed to be built first and as it is to be built in front of the part of the cliff that the developer’s contractor has partly surveyed and found to be faulty, this may be a hindrance to building the hotel.

I will try to add to this if anything else occurs to me that may help people understand the issue.

Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site Cabinet Decision Tomorrow

 I think in terms of Thanet the mixture of prominent position and size means this is probably the most important mostly residential development in Thanet within living memory.

 An aspect of the very prominent seafront buildings is that on the whole whether they are good bad appropriate or inappropriate they mostly seem to stay put for over 100 years.

 The economic and visual impact of large developments on the seafronts of our main towns is considerable and goes a very long way towards making our towns what they are.

 Whether you agree with this approach or not the meeting to decide the future of this development is to be held in secret and all of the associated documentation is secret too, see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=151&MId=2919&Ver=4

 All we have in the public domain, is the general subject of the meeting, “The Royal Sands Development Agreement.”

Oddly enough the actual development agreement is in the public domain, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/ this is a long and complicated document that sets out what the developer should build and when, it also sets out how the council owned land becomes owned by the developer and the council gets paid for the land. 

 I think it reasonable to assume that the object of the meeting is for the council cabinet to decide either on changes to the development agreement (either writing a new one or another variation), or on terminating the agreement altogether.

I am pretty foggy about the legal and procedural ins and outs, but am pretty sure that with the council, it is the cabinet or the full council only, that has the power to change development agreements relating to council owned land.

My guess is that what happens in practice is that the developer approaches the council officers asking for changes and those officers work out a series of options that protect the council’s interests and then put those options before cabinet for decision.   

 Obviously the development isn’t going to plan, as the schedule in the development agreement says that that most of the structural frame of the building should be built by now.

Obviously the hopes and expectations in terms of employment, which were along the lines of about 200 people working on the site during the last year didn’t happen.

Looking at the site at the moment, there isn’t a sense of one stage finished and another about to commence, but much more one of a work in progress abandoned unexpectedly. Holes dug but not filled with concrete, incomplete pillars with leaning and rusting reinforcing rods.

 My guess here is that the situation at the moment relates to finding the money, to continue the building work, of course it could be because they have now reached the area where the developers contractor surveyed the cliff façade and highlighted problems, see http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/index.htm or their may be some other explanation. The secrecy makes it difficult to know for sure.

Personally from the council’s engineers response I received via Allan Poole I doubt that it relates to the issues I highlighted, to do with assessing the flood risk, sea defence and cliff stability.

Anyone who missed this the two blog posts, the first one my open letter to cabinet members and two of their responses, here http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/royal-sands-development-on-pleasurama_23.html and a further post containing the email from Allan and my reply, here http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/royal-sands-development-on-pleasurama_30.html

 So having considered all of this I intend explore the financial implications, first I am assuming that my concerns as a local resident won’t have that much in the way of implications here, particularly as most of my concerns were raised first so long ago, way before construction work started on the site about a year ago. I would guess that at that time they had a financial plan, as in the first place they wouldn’t have started the work and in the second place the previous cabinet would have stopped the development from proceeding three years ago, when they had the opportunity, if they thought it couldn’t be financed.

When the site was first put out for tender by the council, one of the most important aspects was that it should have a major leisure aspect as well as a residential aspect to finance this. 

 As an example of what I mean here, another firm that tendered for this site offered to include a swimming pool that they were going to gift to the town on completion of the development. This was Westcliff Park Estates at that time they were building the development opposite the boating pool on the Westcliff in Ramsgate.

The council rejected them on the grounds that they lacked the financial credentials and selected SFP who at that time were purely a Virgin Island company, so the council wouldn’t have had any way of discovering their financial status.

 So I come to what may have caused the developer financial problems, I think idea was that once the first apartments had been sold the money raised was to have been used to finance building more departments.

One problem here is that I think – reading the development agreement - the council were concerned that once the apartments were built the main leisure aspect the hotel wouldn’t be built. This is of particular concern as the hotel is in front of the part of the cliff that the developers contractor has examined and found has problems.

 So at the moment there is a development agreement saying that the hotel has to be built first, that is before the money from selling the apartments starts coming in.

 Another problem here is to do with the flood risk, this isn’t the same as the safety issues that I have been highlighting for years, but relates to borrowing money. During the period between when the plans were first approved and now the site has been designated by the Environment Agency as high risk, in terms of flooding, but because the developer hasn’t been legally obliged to he hasn’t had a flood risk assessment made of the site.

 This would cause a problem for anyone trying to obtain a mortgage for a new build situated in a high risk flood zone, that may make it difficult for the people who want to buy the apartments to get the money to do so. I am not really certain if this would also be a problem for the developer if he needed to find finance, say for example to build the hotel. I do think that it may be a consideration if we ever get to the stage where an apartment reaches a stage where someone can actually buy it.

 In terms of other sources of finance, there is of course the value of the freehold of the site and there may be some way that financing the development could be financed using the land as security for a development loan.

 I may add to this if any further thoughts occur to me and as much of this post relates to the legal and financial aspects of councils and property development development, something that hasn’t figured much in my experience as an engineer, anglican religious and shop assistant, it is highly likely that there is much I have either missed out or misunderstood.     

  The pictures of this part of Ramsgate, click on them to enlarge, are a small proportion of the ones that I used to work out the history of the sea defences in this part of the town.

Having looked at the documentation again, see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/documents/g2919/Public%20reports%20pack,%2005th-Apr-2012%2019.00,%20Cabinet.pdf?T=10 “Heads of Terms Agreement” it looks as though there is the possibility of a new development agreement involved.

Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site in Ramsgate, open letter

I have sent an open letter to all of the cabinet members about the Royal Sands development, I did something like this with the previous Conservative Cabinet when it came before them about three years ago, so it will be interesting to see how a Labour cabinet responds to this one.

It’s a bit long I’m afraid but then my excuse is I wrote it during a busy day in the shop, I guess this is the largest development and the most important one for Ramsgate, so any decision will be critical to the way the town rides the current economic problems.

Anyway here is the open letter: 

I am writing to you as a cabinet member as the development agreement is coming before cabinet once again.

As you are probably aware it came before cabinet about three years ago, with the officers recommendation being not to proceed with the development on the grounds that there were insufficient financial guarantees, but the then cabinet decided to proceed with the development with reduced financial protection for the council.

At the time I discussed this issue with the two main officers concerned, Doug *** who was then head of major projects and Brian *** who was then head of building control.

My concerns discussed with them at the time related to the safety issues of what is a very demanding construction site, on a high risk flood zone and adjacent to a an unsupported chalk cliff.

At that time they made assurances that the problems related to these issues would be handled by the council’s building control department at the building control stage, when they received detailed construction plans.

The flood risk aspect had already been highlighted by The Environment Agency, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/ their main concerns being related to wave overtopping and emergency escapes for the 1,000 or so people inside in the event of a tidal surge storm.

At this time the plan accepted by the council and Jacobs the council’s civil engineering advisors was to pile bore the building, in layman’s terms; screw it firmly to the chalk bedrock below the site, see http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id2.htm

Due to several unforeseen events, both of these senior officers leaving the council and building control going to a private firm, changes were made to the foundation design that appear to have been the result of poor communication between all of the parties involved.

The fundamental problem is that despite this site being in a high risk flood zone the flood risk assessment strongly recommended by The Environment Agency has never occurred.

The geological structure of the site is solid chalk bedrock at about the level of a low tide extending from the bottom of the cliff to the sea, created before the construction of the harbour and caused by natural sea erosion of the cliff.

The construction of the harbour caused a sand beach to form below the cliff and in 1860 when this beach was converted into a railway station the chalk spoil from the railway tunnel was laid on the sand, bringing the whole site up to the level it is now.

On the seaward side of this pile of chalk flagstones were laid forming an inclined frontage to the promenade.

I have written to Mike **** the council’s engineer and he has confirmed that that council has no plans for any subsequent modern sea defence there, founded in the chalk bedrock below.

All of the rest of the promenade in Ramsgate is fronted on the seaward side by modern Environment Agency designed concrete sea defences set into the chalk bedrock.

In what I take to be a mixture of a lack of communication and the lack of a flood risk assessment the foundations for the new development, that have been partially completed, only extend down to the sand beach and are not attached to the chalk bedrock beneath.

The same railway company that built this structure in 1861 also built the sea defence between Reculver and The Isle of Thanet that failed in the 1953 storm, leading to the loss of about seven square miles of land and about four miles of railway track in one night. 

I guess as you are an intelligent person I don’t have to draw you a diagram of the potential public safety issues.

My understanding is that the promenade structure is entirely the responsibility of the council and that any improvements to achieve a structure suitable to protect a large residential structure with shallow foundations from the sea, would have to be paid for by the council.

I expect that you are already aware that the council has expended about £1m on repairs to the cliff façade, these repairs haven’t been entirely successful and further essential repairs to the repairs have already occurred.

In view of the large safety area needed for those repairs, the investigation of part of the cliff façade carried out by the development contractor Cardy Construction, see http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/index.htm and various representations made by me that resulted in a hse investigation that instigated emergency repairs and a safety cordon, the council agreed to put in place a program of regular surveys and maintenance. The first of these surveys occurred at the end of last year and I am still waiting for the report relating to it.

It is important to understand that the cliff façade structure wasn’t designed as a cliff support structure, as the harbour arches or the Marina Esplanade arches were, so this is an unsupported chalk cliff.

The normal standard applied to unsupported chalk cliffs i.e. it is ok to walk in front of them but not to sit beneath them doesn’t apply in this case, as people will be living 4 metres in front of the cliff face.

Once again all of the maintenance liability appears to rest with the council.

Unfortunately all the cabinet discussion about this issue is subject to the exclusion of the public, so none of the related documentation is available to me, I obtained the development agreement and that variation to it, that relate to the previous cabinet meeting of 16^th June 2009, via the foi and that is published here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/ in a series of linked pages. This puts me in the difficult position of having to guess what the developer is asking for this time and what aspects would be require secrecy.

What the developer promised the cabinet in 2009 was.

June 2009 enabling works for piling and drainage.

January 2010 commencement of groundworks, piling, services and surface drainage pipe.

August 2010 completion of groundworks, piling, services and surface drainage pipe.

March 2011 commencement of structural frame transfer slab of the hotel and the first residential block. (the one next to the hotel at the lift end of the site) 

What actually happened was the surface drain pipe from the site to the harbour was put in, but no work started on the site until about a year ago, when a heath and safety licence for 200 workers was posted at the site gates. This was then followed by between two and four workers on site for most of the last year pouring the shallow concrete foundations.

Now the site has the look of being left hurriedly in the middle of work in progress, doors of one of the storage sheds left open, I have contacted the contractor about this but after about a week it remains open, part encased and unencased reinforcing rods for the transfer slab support pillars, looking rather bent and rusty.

There is no sense of one stage finished and another due to start, but very much a look of a project in progress that was suddenly abandoned possibly because the money ran out.  

So my guess is that the main forward investor the hotelier pulled out at some time and that the developer’s emphasis has moved away from the hotel. Indeed during such work as has been carried out over the last year the emphasis has been away from the hotel end of the site where no work has occurred at all, so one would assume that the hotel, which was to have been constructed first hasn’t been a priority since work started on site.

Because I am working largely in the dark here, but hope to get you to consider a way forward with this development that would be least damaging to Ramsgate’s economy, I have to consider a variety scenarios and outcomes. I also want you to understand that it is about ten years since the Whitbread project was first proposed and that economic damage to the town of having a building site on the town’s main leisure site has been considerable.

If the cabinet decides to continue with the project I would ask you to consider using any bargaining power available to ensure that the development is at least safe, perhaps insisting on a flood risk assessment if this is possible and an independent assessment of the cliff façade.

With a flood risk assessment any protective works could be negotiated now rather at the whim of some future storm.

An independent cliff façade assessment would mean that there was some understanding of the ongoing liability here, that wasn’t prepared by the same people who supervised the work that has already proved to be defective.

Alternatively if the cabinet decide that there is no way that the development can proceed then I am hoping that you will seek some way that the site can be cleared so that it can be used for leisure and parking.

In a general sense I am not happy about this major local development on a council owned site, being only subject to discussion in secret and feel that there should be some involvement of local people and some public information available about it. So I would further ask you to ensure that if the project continues you will insist on some public information scheme.

At the moment I can see why the documents for next week’s cabinet meeting related to the financial situation may need excluding from the public although as the development agreement leases and variation are already in the public domain even this seems to have very little benefit, however I fail to see why those related to the rescheduling of the development should be. 

I am sending this as an open letter to all of the cabinet members and will publish it online, please send me any thoughts or comment you may have for publication.

Best regards Michael. 

Royal Sands Development on the old Pleasurama site in Ramsgate comes back before the council cabinet, an update.

When I did my last two Pleasurama updates which involved asking Thanet District Council and Cardy Construction the contractor building the development questions about the development, the answers I got led me to ask more questions and make some assumptions.

This combined with some historical research and another foi request to the council has produced enough information for another post updating the situation.

First the legal position with the leases and the development agreement.

Here are the documents for anyone interested http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/

Back in October of last year I got the following answers from the council:

1.    No records are held of changes to the development agreement on this issue.

1a.    No records of a revised programme are held.

1b.    No records of a public information programme are held.

2.    No material alterations to the approved scheme have been proposed or approved.

You can read the post about this at http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/10/royal-sands-development-on-pleasurama.html if you want more information.

What I took this to mean is that the council haven’t agreed to the changes that the developer has to make to continue in the way they say they are going to on their website http://www.royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/

By this I mean building the hotel last, in fact starting from the other end of the site to the one agreed in the development agreement. My understanding is that these changes will have to go back to the council for agreement and that the council will have to amend the agreement again.

I would guess until this happens the development is pretty much stuck, I also assumed that the council would have to check on the status of financial guarantees and progress so far and that the option to determine the development agreement would come before cabinet once again.

Second progress on the site.

I think the most worrying thing here is the contractor’s assurances, combined with their heath and safety documentation has suggested for over a year now that there would imminently be about 200 workers on the site rapidly building the development.

In practice what has happened for the last year is that there have been between two and four workers on the site, using very inexpensive materials to produce unexpectedly shallow foundations.

Throughout the last year the speculation has been, is this really the start of construction, or is it a delaying tactic to keep the option open to develop the site?

To expand on this, the developer seems to have done the absolute minimum in terms of expenditure and resources, that would comply with the delays allowed in the development, agreement assuming the council was notified of those delays. As they haven’t notified the council it looks like we have come to crunch time on this aspect too.

What the council have published about this is a bit vague, see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=14755

Third the flood and storm risk

One of the main problems with this site is it sits on land reclaimed by the sea and is in a high risk flood zone, the environment agency have already recommended that there is a proper flood risk assessment see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/

Having read this document I thought the greatest danger in a big storm with a high tide was overtopping by the sea, now I have more serious concerns. 

This story goes back to about the time of Christ when the first harbour was made at Ramsgate, at this time the cliffs would have gone straight down to the sea as far as about the low tide level, where the solid chalk bedrock that forms the seabed here would have been.

The harbour was started by extending out north-eastern side of the natural inlet and forming groins to hold the sand in place to protect it in easterly storms.

This map published in 1736 shows the situation then, as you can see part of the Pleasurama site has already been reclaimed by the build-up of sand. 

By the 1790s the harbour had been completed and this further extension of the East Pier produced the shelter that allowed more sand to build up. 

This map was produced in 1849 click on the link for the whole map, greatly enlarged http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/map1849/ as you can see by then pretty much all of the site has been reclaimed.

As far as I can tell the natural shape of the reclaimed area produced by the harbour wall is that shown in the map.

The next major step forward with this site was turning it into a railway station in 1860. what they did was to build up the level on top of the sand with chalk dug from the railway tunnel and face the seaward inclined front of this pile of chalk with small slabs cemented onto it.

This 1872 map shows the situation then, click on this link for an enlargement of the whole map http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/map1872/ these map enlargements are best viewed in internet explorer.

The groins to collect sand in the hope of protecting the structure are clearly visable.

The railway company that built this railway extension from Herne Bay were in a hurry, they cut quite a few corners and the opening of the line was delayed for two years because some of the bridges they had built were condemned.

After the railway had opened there were various structural failures of bits of the associated civil engineering the most dramatic of which was the north Thanet sea defence between Reculver and Birchington.

This failed in a storm and in one night about ten square miles of land and about four miles of the railway were washed out by the sea.

Here is a photo of them filling the area back in after building a proper concrete sea defence.     

My various enquires have reached a stage where the council have agreed that the sea defence, in front of the Pleasurama site, is so old that they don’t have any plans relating to it.

They have sent me plans of the recent concrete promenade, but they reveal that this is just sitting on the old sand beach and the pile of chalk.

OK time for a diagram, the grey bit is the solid chalk cliff and seabed, the yellow bit the sand the sea has deposited, the red bit the sea wall between the Pleasurama site and the beach, and the green bit the chalk infill.

The original idea mentioned in the documents produced by the council’s engineers, see the pages at http://thanetonline.com/cliff was to screw the development to the solid chalk seabed.

What has happened instead is that the developer has opted for shallow load spreading concrete foundations resting on the sand that was deposited by the sea.

As what the sea leaves behind it can also take away again, this makes sea wall important.

Most of the sea walls in Thanet were designed by and are maintained by The environment Agency, this is very evident in Margate at the moment where major works are being undertaken on the sea walls there, to prevent damage during a big storm.

As far as I have been able to find out the only bit of sea wall in Ramsgate that isn’t a modern well maintained structure, is the bit in front of the Pleasurama site, this is owned and maintained by the council.   

 We have a bit of history locally of council maintained structures failing.

The nearest is the harbour wall shown in these pictures.

I do have a lot of correspondence about this issue, which I will publish eventually, but at the moment I am trying to keep a complicated issue as simple as possible.

The problem here is not so much whether the sea defence is up to the task of protecting the sand that the building stands on in the event of a serious storm, but really at the much earlier stage of no one having evaluated the sea defence.

Fourth Cliff Safety Issues

The council’s cliff façade inspection was delayed and they have promised to send me the report when the work is complete.  

Fifth Summery of the Situation

Once again this development is coming before the council, this time: “To make changes to the development agreement in relation to the provisions for third party funders, the timing of parts of the development, the guarantees supporting the agreement and the agreed project milestones.”

I take this to mean further delays, the financial aspects are not my province so I won't even try to guess at what third party funders and guarantees supporting the agreement implies.

My take has always been that a proper flood risk assessment and a cliff condition assessment independent of those involved in the cliff repair contract both need to happen before anything else is done on site.

Essentially to address the basic safety issues, especially those highlighted by The Environment Agency, for a development of over 100 residential units, hotel, road, shops and restaurants for a structure that is likely to have about 1,000 people in it.

Back in 2009 this issue came before cabinet, at that time the development had been delayed so much that it had breached the terms of the previous development agreement. 

What the developer put to the cabinet then was that they would finish the ground works by August 2010, the wording in the cabinet document is completion of Groundworks, Piling and Services.

There certainly hasn’t been any sign of piling, the laying of sewers water mains, gas mains or anything apart from the unexpectedly shallow foundations.

Back in 2009 the council officers recommended that the cabinet ended the development agreement, so I am assuming that there is a possibility of the agreement and therefore the development coming to an end when it comes befor cabinet next month.   

Whichever way it goes this decision is a very major one for the future of Ramsgate, the building is much larger than The Turner Contemporary, the asset is the most prominent and largest council owned empty site in the town.

All through the decade of this saga the amount of public information, consultation has been just about zero, the damage done to the economy of the town in having the main leisure site an unsightly mess has been incalculable.  

Finally there is my personal view of the development.

I have always considered this to be one of the most demanding sites anyone could build a residential development on and from the outset I looked for anyone involved that had any experience of the main problems associated with this site, that wouldn’t exist on an ordinary building site. One being building very close to an unsupported chalk cliff and the other being building right behind the beach on the foreshore.

My understanding is that there is a millionaire behind the development who I don’t think has any experience with the problems associated with this site.

Various contractors have come and gone and various things have been done and presumably some of them have made quite a bit of money, some aspects of the work so far are just beyond belief.

One example here is the large roundabout at the pavilion end of the site, first what could a roundabout of this size there possibly be for? Next why lay it all at great expense and then dig it up again to put the surface drain in?

Another is the two way road between the development and the cliff, anyone can see how narrow parts of this are, the implications of a lorry catching either a building support or the cliff façade seem pretty obvious. 

On several occasions over the past about eight years I have discussed this development with senior council officers and councillors see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/seafront/index.htm and http://www.thanetonline.com/Pleasurama and http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/ followed by multiple blog postings http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Pleasurama%20development over that time various goal posts have moved, some of the issues I have raised have been addressed and some just haven’t.  

Sometime early in this dialogue my concerns about the site switched from those about the look of the thing, which frankly is pretty awful, partly because of the chopping of the gull winged roof to get most of the building below the cliff and partly because the architect has never addressed the problem that the roof of the building will be viewed form the adjacent cliff top path, to those about the safety of the building.

I think they originally intended to go ahead with the development without doing anything to the cliff at all, I think it fair to say that it was this intention to build so close to a cliff façade with a serious structural defect, that first put me on my guard about the safety issues. 

Now I have a new safety problem and to understand, you have to appreciate I already have a situation where the environment agency have said in writing that the development should have a flood risk assessment.

I now have written confirmation from the council that they have no plans for the sea defence in front of the development. This means that have nothing whatsoever on which to base any understanding of its ability to withstand a severe storm.

I would guess position with the sea defence is in rather the same category as the cliff where the developer’s contractor examined part of it, found it to be defective, the developer seems to have used this information as a delaying tactic, when it was convenient, but is now ignoring the defects and carrying on regardless.

There is a difference between providing a reasonably safe development and shifting all of the responsibility to the council. There is also a limit to the amount that can be spent by the council in making this development safe for the duration of its life.

With the cliff façade we have got as far as determining that part of the structure is reasonably safe and well constructed, the arched part, the developer’s contractor even went as far as checking the foundations of one of the pillars and found it to be sound.

Unfortunately we have also got as far as determining that part of the structure has problems, doesn’t appear to be reasonably well constructed, the developers contractor even went as far as checking the foundations of one of the pillars and found that instead of a concrete foundation there was just a pile of muddy chalk, see http://thanetonline.com/cliff/ 

If the council goes down the road with the sea defence that they went down with the cliff, they will commission several reports on it, spend a six figure sum on repairs and we will all be looking at another three or four years of delay.

The underlying problem is that both the cliff wall and the sea wall weren’t designed to protect a residential development, the standard of both these structures is appropriate to a fun fair and amusement arcade.     

Over the last year or so, I have asked the council about the ongoing liability of the development, as things stand it would seem that the council have to pay to maintain the cliff and the sea defence, to a sufficient standard to protect residential dwellings.

With a lot of the cliffs in Thanet the normal standard is you can walk under them but there is I sign warning you not to sit under them and with the other council maintained sea defence in Ramsgate, the harbour’s east pier, there is sign telling you not to go on it in stormy weather, I guess the pictures above are an indicator of why doing so could be unwise.

With the cliff façade the council have already said they will have to spend money on the part at the Broadstairs end and they have already spent money on the portal part at the lift end since the £1m repair contract.

It is important to appreciate that cliffs and sea defences have an element of risk attached to them which increases as the man made structures associated with them ages.

The officers I have asked about this have chosen to interpret these enquiries only in terms of worst case scenarios, saying that the council have insurance cover for when these structures fail, however I think the main cost is in preventing them from failing.

Politics and Responsibilities

I hadn’t really expected much in the way of comments on this post until I had finished it, but there is already some comment suggesting that this is a political issue, or at least there needs to be someone to blame, probably a politician or a group of politicians.

I think in terms of politics that actual planning application slipped under the political net. Around ten years ago under the old Labour council administration there were plans for a smaller development, one well below the cliff, which was backed by Whitbread the brewers.

With these big applications there is usually a great heap of architectural drawings and a document called the planning and design statement, with mock up pictures and an explanation of what is going to be built.

I am not saying here that the Whitbread proposal was a good one that would have got through planning, it never reached that stage. However from the planning and design statement it looked OK and as far as I understand both the Labour Group and the Conservative group were behind it.

During the time when we changed from a Labour to a Conservative administration, which is when the local politician have their eyes off the ball, Whitbread pulled out and their partner SFP that I think were supposed to be the investors not the developers took over the project. At some point in all of this the planning drawings changed although the planning and design statement remained pretty much the same.

By the time anyone realised the building had changed it was to late to object to the planning application and of course the local politicians had backed the thing.

We then entered the bizarre situation where plans had been approved for a building that was too tall to fit in the space between the high tide mark and the top of the cliff.

When it comes to the blame game, there are a few things that don’t add up, decisions that looked weighed unreasonably in favour of the developer and against any local consultation.

One of these was when the gull winged roof was removed, which I think should have been viewed as material change and ought to have resulted in a new planning consent.

This would have meant a mandatory flood risk assessment and local people having a chance to object to the development.

There was the cabinet meeting of 19^th June 2009 when the development agreement came before cabinet with officer recommendations to terminate the agreement, mostly in financial grounds.

I have asked why the Conservative group went against offices advice on this one, even asked Simon Moores on several occasions where he has commented in blog threads, but have had no meaningful response.

My guess is that it may be to do with spiting Ramsgate where the there is a Labour majority or it may be to do with some special relationship with the developer. Councillors don’t often go against the advice of senior officers, so they may have had a genuine and legitimate reason to do so.

There was the granting of the leases without going through the asset disposal process, which once again would have involved public consultation. 

How we got to a situation where all of the expensive liability wound up with the council is unclear, I can understand the sea defence which has always been the councils problem, but I believe with the previous lease the cliff façade was the responsibility of the amusement company.

There is also the developer’s responsibility, not pursuing the contractors investigation of the cliff, but I think worst of all ignoring the Environment agency’s strong recommendations for a flood risk assessment and safe emergency escapes from the development.

Another issue here relates to building control, over the past few years I discussed the issue with the head of building control and the officer in charge of major projects, both of these officers have left the council now and as always I don’t put officers names on the blog.

However they both told me that my concerns about the safety of the buildings design, particularly in terms of ability to withstand a tidal surge storm would be handled by the council at the building control stage.

They said that at this point the council would receive detailed planning drawings and that the council’s building control department would ensure that the designs contained features to withstand the special problems related to the site.

To me the construction looks about a light as it could be for a structure of this height on an ordinary site away from an unsupported cliff and high risk tidal flood zone.

I now gather that the information that the council officers gave me was wrong and the developer is able to use a private outside firm for building control, which is what the developer has done.

I have contacted this firm and had assurances that the person dealing with the building control would discuss some of the issues, but the have never returned my communications.   

I think that is about it, sorry it was such a long post, I am still waiting for some of the documentation, but as I said I will publish the supporting documents.